The crusades of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries have been studied for generations as a Christian war to conquer the Holy Land, and specifically Jerusalem. However, the ideology behind the crusades had complicated social, political, and cultural impacts that directed Christian aggression towards regions far from the Holy Sepulcher or the Temple Mount. This project’s aim is to provide a lesson plan to teach the concepts and motivations of crusaders from the peripheries of Europe using the lens of the Danish crusaders. It is intended for teachers instructing students at the undergraduate or secondary school level with a basic knowledge of the Middle Ages and Crusades. This lesson will also look at crusader mentalities through the usage of Danish iconography and wording. By the end of the lesson, students should understand the complexities and basic problems of grouping the Northern Crusades and its participants within the larger crusading movement.

Information designed for guiding the instructor in delivering the lesson will be in bold (excluding section headings).

Lesson Plan

Display and discuss the following notes for the students. The PowerPoint format is displayed below along with the docx and pptx files for easily adding additional information or if another format for presenting the material is preferred. A reading list is given at the bottom of this lesson to supplement these notes, either for more advanced or reading intensive courses, or if the instructor wishes to elaborate on individual topics in their lecture during lesson.

Exercise 1: Chronicle and CrusaderGive the following information to the students either as a slide, or added to the worksheet. The docx file has been provided for the latter situation.Chronicles were recorded at the request of, or as presents for, powerful individuals. The Gesta Danorum, or Deeds of the Danes, was one such chronicle written some time around 1200 for Absalon, the figure in the picture below. The Chronicle is 16 "books" long, each one containing different themes and elements, and stretches chronologically from before the time of Christ to Saxo's present day.​Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, XIV: 21.3-22.4“He was a parent as much as a pontiff of his country, striking for his brilliant combination of soldiering and priesthood. His first encounter with the Wends took place at the village of Boeslunde [a village in the southwest part of Zealand, Denmark] on the day before Palm Sunday. As soon as their invasion had been reported, Absalon, provided only with the eighteen soldiers who made up his retinue, battled against the troops from twenty-four ships, a contest as successful as it was dangerous. After a large number of horsemen on the opposing side had been routed, he laid low almost all their infantry. Yet in a clash as hazardous as this he lost just one of his own men, a handsome victory which marked an auspicious beginning to his episcopal and military careers.”

Worksheet/discussion questions:

What can you say about this medium (chronicles)?

What type of figure is this/What status is this person (peasant, knight, ruler, clergy, etc.)?

What elements are portrayed as important to these people based on this description?

What can you say about some key words in the first sentence that might identify him and what they say about his status or character? Mainly "parent", "pontiff", "soldiering", and "priesthood".

Absalon: Crusader or...

After the discussion or completion of each question, provide the description of Absalon that appears immediately before the above passage in the chronicle. It provides the identity of Absalon as the Bishop (of Roskilde):

Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, XIV: 21.3“No sooner was he elected bishop than he began to act as much like a sea rover as a spiritual father, for he thought little of protecting the Church within, if he allowed it to be endangered from without.”

Once the identity and status are known, discuss the following::

What does it say about the people, culture, and idea of crusading that this passage describes Absalon's election to bishop (a very high position in the Church), but then immediately talks about his warrior prowess?

What does it mean that the Gesta Danorum was written for this figure?

​Is this a "penitent" on a "pilgrimage"?

What does it say about the current society that this statue was sculpted in 1902?

Exercise 2: Epitaphs of a Saint and a KingThe identity of the individuals in each epitaph is purposefully withheld to allow students to guess which was written first, second, and third. The first epitaph is from St. Duke Canute Lavard's tomb, and the words survive only in his hagiography (the story of the saint's life and miracles). St. Canute Lavard was murdered in 1131 as a result of internal Danish political conflict and his body was eventually moved into Ringsted Abbey in 1157. He was officially canonized by the Church in 1169, but the epitaph dates to his first grave in the 1130's. The other two epitaphs are carved on a lead slab and belong to Canute's father, King Valdemar I (the Great) who died in 1182. The first epitaph which appears on the right was carved for his 1182 burial at Ringsted Abbey. The left epitaph was made shortly after a fire in 1242 damaged the abbey. The caretakers of the abbey flipped over the lead slab and carved a new, more elaborate inscription on the opposite side. Each epitaph was therefore created 50-60 years apart and spanned the height of the crusading movement.

Epitaphs were written on tombs or slabs of metal or stone then placed as a grave marking to identify the deceased person. The first epitaph no longer exists except in historical accounts, and describes a specific saint in Denmark.

"This is the tomb of the Duke traveling to the palace of light, after the war of the world and after the battle of the flesh of Satan. You whomsoever comes here pressed by the sands of sin, you may retire from the repulsive poisons of the world. Here medicine is given, here death is put to flight and illness soon cured, by which a pure heart prays. The blind [person] sees, the leper is made clean, the lame [person] walks, the deaf [person] hears, the enraged [insane with anger] [person] feels.”

“Here lies X the first, King of the Danes, son of Saint Z, mighty conqueror of the Wends, liberator of the exceptionally oppressed fatherland, restorer and defender of peace. Here he happily conquered the Rugians and first converted those same people to the faith of Christ from ruined idols. And he also first built out of cooked bricks, which is called Danevirke by the people, the wall for the protection of the entire kingdom; and the fortress in Sproga. He died in the year 1182 of the incarnation of the lord, in the 26th [year] of his reign, May 12th.”

“Here lies X, king of the Danes, first conqueror and lord of the Wends, liberator of the homeland, defender of the peace. The son of Saint Z who conquered the Rugians and first converted them to the faith of Christ. He died in the year 1182 of the incarnation of the lord in the 26th year of his reign, May 12th.”

The students should answer the following questions either individually or in small groups:

What is the point of this medium (the epitaph)?

How is this different than, say, a chronicle? A song?

What chronological order should they be in and why?

What differences do you spot?

What could these differences mean and why would they be added or removed?

Is there anything that stands out as “Crusader-like"?

Could there be another explanation for these?

Why would they want anything Crusader-like on their epitaphs?

Why would anyone want to be remembered as a crusader?

​Discuss the questions as a class, then finish the lesson with a discussion of the following questions, “Were the Danes who fought in the Northern Crusades fighting for the same thing as the crusaders to Jerusalem? Does this then complicate defining the Northern Crusades as Crusades?”

For reading intensive or advanced courses, or to add further information to the notes at the beginning of the lesson, see the following:​ Jensen, Kurt Villads. "Denmark and the Second Crusade: The Formation of a Crusader State?". In The Second Crusade: Scope and Consequences, edited by Jonathan Phillips and Martin Hoch, 164-79. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001.“Chapter IV: Danish Crusading Institutions,” in Jerusalem in the North: Denmark and the Baltic Crusades, 1100-1522. Edited by Ane L. Bysted, Carsten Selch Jensen, Kurt Villads Jensen, and John H. Lind. Outremer: Studies in the Crusades and the Latin East: V. 1. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2012.Essays in Crusading on the Edge: Ideas and Practice of Crusading in Iberia and the Baltic Region. Edited by T.K. Nielsen and I. Fonnesberg Schmidt. Outremer: Studies in the Crusades and the Latin East: V. 1. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2016.

​Translations of the epitaphs are provided by Martin Nelson. Translation of Saxo Grammaticus was taken from Karsten Friis-Jensen and Peter Fisher's 2015 translation: Gesta Danorum; The History of the Danes.Edited by Karsten Friis-Jensen. Oxford Medieval Texts. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2015.